The Boiling Frog: How Appropiate

Thursday, 22 March 2012

How Appropiate

The new Team GB kit for the Olympics has been unveiled and the main talking point is that the Union flag is all blue - eliminating red from the design.

Add in a few yellow stars and it would be perfect and wholly appropriate.

5 comments:

john in cheshire22 March 2012 22:12
It's not very attractive, is it? But then it is consistent with the awful 2012 logo. Brings back memories of the Millenium Dome - which I had the misfortune to visit. Just like I expect communists would have produced. But then, they probably did.
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The Boiling Frog23 March 2012 09:24
@JiC The 2012 logo really is something else isn't it?

I'm in two minds about the Millennium Dome; as a building it's unique and rather clever architecturally. However, and obviously, it was hideously expensive and completely pointless. I didn't go when it was filled with tat.

Clarkson has a good point to make about the Dome here in his superb documentary about Brunel (3.30 mins in)
ReplyDelete
john in cheshire23 March 2012 15:03
TbF, The dome cost something like a billion pounds, including the crap that originally filled it, and the sweeteners to get someone to take it off the government's hands. The contents were absolutely abysmal; which is why I likened them to something one might expect to see in a communist country. But then it was started by the previous conservative government, against everyone's wishes as I recall and in 1997, Mr Mandelson decided it should go ahead (it always seemed to be his pet toy). And it was originally supposed to be a temporary structure; so newlabour started as they meant to go on - by squandering our money without our consent. As a structure, it's OK, I suppose but again, just like the Olympics, the costs were horrendous and a large amount of the money went to foreign companies rather than English, Irish, Scottish or Welsh companies. So, taxpayers money being effectively given away while our indigenous workforce is left scrambling for the crumbs from the table.
By the way, should there have been a link in your reply ?
ReplyDelete
Anonymous26 March 2012 20:25
Next up for a gargantuan waste of money, see the Titanic Visitors Centre in Belfast.
ReplyDelete
The Boiling Frog26 March 2012 20:33
@JiC There was supposed to be a link, sorry doesn't seem to work. Search for "Brunel Clarkson pt 5" on YouTube.

@Anon I'm bored with the Titanic anniversary already
ReplyDelete

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EU quotes

"The EU is the old Soviet Union dressed in Western clothes"
(President Gorbachev)

“I have lived in your future ….and it doesn’t work”
(Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky on the EU)

"Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe"
(Treaty of Rome 1957)

"This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union..."
(Maastricht Treaty 1992)

"Now we've signed it - we had better read it"
(Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Secretary on the Maastricht Treaty)

The supremacy of Community Law when in conflict with national law is the logical consequence of the federal concept of the Community"
(H P Ipsen, 1964 - 9 years before we joined)

"[Norway] held a referendum [on the EU] that went the wrong way"
(Douglas Hurd, former Foreign Secretary on the Maastricht Treaty)

"The Tories have been indulging in their usual double talk. When they go to Brussels they show the greatest enthusiasm for political union. When they speak in the House of Commons they are most anxious to aver that there is no commitment whatever to any political union."
(Labour MP Hugh Gaitskell, October 1962)

"The Constitution is the capstone of a European Federal State."
(Guy Verhofstadt, Belgian Prime Minister)

'If it's a Yes we will say "on we go", and if it's a No we will say "we continue".'
(Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Council)

“The substance of the Constitution is preserved. That is a fact.”
(German Chancellor Angela Merkel on the Lisbon Treaty)

"I have read some of [the Lisbon Treaty] but not all of it."
(Caroline Flint, former Minister for Europe)

“They must go on voting until they get it right.”
(Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission)

"If you go through all the structures and features of this emerging European monster you will notice that it more and more resembles the Soviet Union."
(Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky)

"The European Union is a state under construction."
(Elmar Brok, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs)

“I have never understood why public opinion about European ideas should be taken into account at all,”
(French PM Raymond Barre)

“I believe neither the French nor the Dutch really rejected the constitutional treaty.”
(Jean-Claude Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg)

“Let’s be clear about this. The rejection of the constitution was a mistake that will have to be corrected.”
(Valéry Giscard d’Estaing)

“The 'no' votes were a demand for more Europe, not less.”
(Romano Prodi, former President of the European Commission)

"I don’t want an ‘in or out’ referendum because I don’t think out is in Britain’s interests.”
(David Cameron, who won't hold a referendum because he thinks he'll lose)

"...there are constitutional innovations."
(Mr Patrick Jenkin, former Tory MP during 2nd reading of European Communities Bill 1972)

"No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifices which any adequate plan for European Union must involve. The people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences, not asked…"
(Peter Thorneycroft, former Tory MP)

"[Bailouts are] expressly forbidden in the treaties by the famous no-bailout clause. De facto, we have changed the treaty."
(French Europe minister Pierre Lelouche)

"The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights... against which a subsequent act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail"
(ECJ Case 6/64)

"[The EU Constitution represents] a visible move in only one direction...from intergovernmentalism to supranationalism...and this should be explained to the people of Europe"
(Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus)

"European integration is fortunately a train moving too fast for anyone to stop it."
(Vaclav Havel, Czech Politician)

“Millions of people in this country will feel as I do, that legislation passed in this way, with no consent, cannot command the assent of the country and would lack moral and constitutional validity”.
(Douglas Jay MP during 2nd reading of European Communities Bill 1972)

"It is an illusion to think that [EU] states can hold on to their autonomy."
(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank 1991)

"...within ten years 80% of our economic legislation, perhaps even fiscal and social as well’ would come from the EU."
(Jacques Delors, President of EU Commission 1988)

"...we must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political unity."
(Romano Prodi, President of EU Commission 1999)

"The day of the nation state is over."
(Roman Herzog, German president, 1996)

"The European system of supranationality comes at the cost of democracy."
(Lord Leach of Fairford)

"A European currency will lead to member nations transferring their sovereignty over financial and wage policy as well as monetary affairs."
(Hans Tietmeyer, head of the Bundesbank, 1991)

"The single currency is the greatest abandonment of sovereignty since the foundation of the European Community: the decision is of an essentially political nature"
(Felipe Gonzalez, a Spanish former PM, 1998)

"The [EU] Council of Ministers will have far more power over the budgets of member states than the federal government in the United States has over the budget of Texas."
(Jean-Claude Trichet, current head of the European Central Bank)

"One must never forget that monetary union, which the two of us were the first to propose more than a decade ago, is ultimately a political project. It aims to give a new impulse to the historic movement toward union of the European states"
(Giscard d’Estaing, who drafted the EU Constitution 1997)

"The process of monetary union goes hand in hand, must go hand in hand, with political integration and ultimately political union. EMU [economic and monetary union] is, and always was meant to be, a stepping stone on the way to a united Europe"
(Wim Duisenberg, first president of the EU Central Bank)

"I like the English style of life. I feel more at home here in London"
(Tintin creator, Belgian born Herge)

"We are not forming coalitions between States, but union among people"
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

"The sovereign nations of the past can no longer solve the problems of the present: they cannot ensure their own progress or control their own future. And the Community itself is only a stage on the way to the organised world of tomorrow."
(Jean Monnet 'Father of Europe')

“There is no question of Britain losing essential national sovereignty”
(Ted Heath)

But...

The British Government Knew The Consequences In 1971

Foreign and Commonwealth Office 30/1048 - 1971

...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes within the member states and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential.

Parliamentary sovereignty will be affected as we have seen. But the need for Parliament to play an increasing (if perhaps more specialised) role may develop. Firstly, although a European Parliament might in the longest term become an effective, directly elected democratic check upon the bureaucracy, this will not be for a long time, and certainly not in the decade to come. In the interval, to minimise the loss of democratic control it will be important that the British Parliamentarians should play an effective role both through the British membership in the European Parliament and through the processes of the British Parliament itself.

Thursday, 22 March 2012

How Appropiate

5 comments:

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